


Sisyphus

by rosethrn



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Sort Of, mixes AOGG with AWAE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24291316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosethrn/pseuds/rosethrn
Summary: Gilbert has tried and will try, perhaps forever, to earn Anne's favor.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 100





	Sisyphus

**i.**

He brings her an apple, because that’s as friendly of a gesture as it gets in Avonlea, and the Blythe family orchard happens to have the best ones. Really, though, he just wants another excuse to talk to her, but he doesn’t know why. She’s pretty, and different, with her fiery hair and blazing eyes. Gilbert likes different, because there’s something challenging about it, and he wanted to figure out what it would be with her. 

She seems less impressed than he’d hoped. He had finally extricated himself from the crowd of schoolboys under the pretense of needing some air, or some other excuse - but by the time he laid his eyes on her red braids again, something was noticeably off. He thought he had cracked through her skittish demeanor, thought there was something warm in her eyes when she’d introduced herself, but if there was, it was gone now. Gilbert tries to come up with the right combination of words to bring it back, but fails, and she leaves him standing tongue-tied outside the schoolhouse. 

It was more than clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Gilbert turns this fact over in his head for a few hours. He focuses on his schoolwork for a while. He doodles in the corner of the page once he’s bored, and plays a game of tic-tac-toe with Charlie to distract himself. He only steals a couple glances over at Anne, because he couldn’t _possibly_ let a random girl screw up his head, and he is most _definitely_ not bothered by this.

But maybe if he just got her attention one more time?

He decides this is the right course of action without thinking it through entirely, and he tears off a corner of his page to toss at her. The paper arcs over and lands neatly beside her, and nearly every head turns but hers. He frowns.

Mr. Phillips is still facing the board obliviously, so he has another go. The next bit of paper lands right in front of her, and she lifts her head to stare blankly ahead. Gilbert steals another glance at Phillips, then creeps over to her, the apple still clutched in his hand, and deposits it in front of her. 

“Oops.”

She says nothing still, and it taunts him. He wants to meet her eyes, to understand why she’s decided to hate him suddenly, but annoyance begins to take root inside him and when he reaches a hand out, it suddenly closes around one of her long braids, and he pulls.

“Carrots!”

The next moment passes so quickly that Gilbert can’t sort out what happened first. She does look at him - he counts this as a win - but she also whips her slate across his face, which the more undetermined man might consider a setback. 

He just smiles. His cheek is hot and stinging.

**ii.**

He learns a lot from the other men on the steamship. Some of them are things he regrets hearing, because their sordid words carry into his thoughts, and he wishes they wouldn’t. Gilbert doesn’t think himself poetic, but he always seems to find the words for Anne, and he would never use theirs. But as the long days pass by, the thought of her becomes hazier, more insubstantial, and he finds it harder to remember her anyways - maybe because he tries so often.

She eludes him in his dreams, a flash of fiery braids and cerulean eyes. In the darkest hours of the night, when he can only hear the ocean outside and feel the slight sway of his hammock in the lower deck, he sometimes allows himself, though shamefully, to imagine her beside him. Her auburn hair is tied in its braids as always, but when he reaches forward to let it down, it comes loose in long waves. It’s like silk when he touches it, and when she looks up at him, undone, he feels some strange and unfamiliar heat spread inside him. He pushes the thought away ruefully, rolls over, and forces himself to think of something else until he drifts into a more innocent sleep; the only evidence of this transgression is the redness fanning across his cheeks that Bash would have teased him about if he had seen it.

**iii.**

Her long red tresses are gone when he next sees her, but he’s too distracted by the girl attached to them to even notice. She looks older, and he imagines he does too. She may have even noticed, because her eyes rake over him for a brief, electrifying moment when they’re standing face to face in the schoolhouse again. 

Gilbert is replaying all the moments he remembers between them in his head for the rest of the day with a renewed freshness from seeing her. He tries to reconcile the young girl he remembered meeting then with the girl she has become, and finds it now a bit more difficult to keep his head straight. But Anne seems hardly more interested in him than before; she’s a friend of his family, but not much more than that, no matter how much his mind tries to twist it. 

He decides not to love her, because he thinks if he decides now, it is the only way to prevent him from getting stuck forever. Gilbert no longer steals admiring glances at her during school; he doesn’t imagine himself walking home with her either. If he dreams of girls in the long hours of the night, they aren’t her - _they aren’t_ , and he makes sure of it. With Anne, he had always felt either immensely happy or immensely annoyed. Their relationship was too uneven, he would remind himself, and even if he wanted to fill in the gaps, he didn’t know how, or if she wanted him to.

He blinks in the darkness, imagines another faceless girl, and pushes the impossible idea of Anne away once more.

**iv.**

He decides to court a woman from his Charlottetown apprenticeship. She’s older than he is, quite alike Anne in spirit, but Gilbert pays no mind to this anyways. She is polite but vibrant, and he imagines that she is exactly what he has always wanted. It helps, too, that she is certainly and objectively beautiful, which he tells himself more often than he tells her.

Winifred takes to Bash easily; her parents are also wealthy, and though this is of less importance to Gilbert, it’s not disregarded. Her father’s influence would open doors for him, he knows that, and it seems he could become more than a country doctor this way. Selfishly, it’s something that Gilbert finds quite enticing about a life with Winifred.

Yet he still goes to school, and here he allows himself to shrink away from adulthood. He captains the hockey team, writes for the paper, studies for his entrance exams. He sees Anne, and though he’s trained himself into friendship with her, there are moments where he wonders if maybe his unsaid words are reflected in her eyes too. When the moment passes, though, he thinks of Winnie, and convinces himself that it’s her he wants.

**v.**

Gilbert and Anne tie for top exam scores - he wouldn’t want it any other way. He’s ended his courtship with Winifred; he plans to go to Queens, and wonders if his and Anne’s paths will ever be entirely separate. He keeps his word to himself for a while, and doesn’t tell her about the burning sensation inside him whenever she looks at him, or the searing heat of her touch when they brush hands - those thoughts are just for him. He knows it would only interfere with the friendship they’ve carefully built over the years.

He thinks he can stay like this, but he grows quickly tired of it at Queens. He sees how other men look at her, knows that she will slip through his fingers, and he tells her one day, all at once. He pours his feelings into words, years of longing and waiting and wanting. 

She listens, but her blue eyes grow darker and from the way her mouth curves downward sympathetically right before she speaks, Gilbert already knows he has lost her. 

**vi.**

Another boy courts Anne at Queens. He is tall and handsome, and Gilbert hates him. He focuses himself on anything but Anne, and tries to busy himself with his work. They’ve become more distant, and Gilbert lets this happen, because looking at her is somehow more painful than it used to be. 

He doesn’t court anyone; he doesn’t think it’s fair, because he remembers how things went awry with Winifred. Gilbert now believes that he should have married her. On good days he knows this to be untrue, because he never loved Winifred; on worse days, he realizes he’s wrecked many things in his life for Anne. Maybe he loves her too much.

She rarely enters his dreams anymore, but when she does, she’s as diaphanous and distant as in real life. A hazy glimmer, a whisper of what he once imagined - and when he reaches out for her, she fades entirely.

**vii.**

Anne refuses Roy Gardner’s proposal. Gilbert sees more of her now, and it’s easier. He no longer clings to his imaginings of her - she no longer exists to him as an ethereal, untouchable dream - she’s just Anne, and he loves this more still. They are friends again, and Gilbert finds a loose comfort in that fact.

Perhaps one day he will try again, but maybe not. Maybe he will marry one of his faceless girls, remove himself from Anne at last, and have a go at being happy. He might marry Anne, if she’ll let him, though Gilbert doesn’t count on it anymore. 

Gilbert becomes a doctor, as he always dreamed. He helps people, and cares for them, and he makes the difference he hoped he would. He loves Anne, regardless of how close or far she is, and these things he knows will be true forever.


End file.
